By Shloimy Lowy
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the dangers of uncontrolled artificial video generation. In my introduction to that article, I mentioned all the ways in which social media and mobile technology have effectively ruined our lives, and possibly civilization. I have been thinking about that ever since. I have been thinking about how my own life has been overtaken by technology I have little control over. How every time I attempt to control it, it shows me who the boss is.
We have all been there. It is the night before a test and all you have done for the past three hours is scroll Instagram. Or for those who have already tried control once, Substack. And for those true self-actualizers, the calculator app. You have already figured out that when you Google “6-7,” the page dances before you, and how the New York Times is still mostly concerned with Trump, and that you can now tint all of your app icons blue or red or black. You have been through the accessibility settings for God’s sake! But you have not gotten anything meaningful done. And you read the articles and the books, and you hear the speeches and notice that the rabbis are all saying the same thing as the psychologists. And you know that they are right, and still, you sit there, stuck in your ways, captured by your habits.
And this time you make a resolution; you will give up social media or YouTube, or uninstall all the apps you don’t need on your phone. And then, to make yourself feel better, you will sit down on your bed with your head decluttered and write an article about it.
But tomorrow you will be bored again, and your phone will slowly suck your attention back. First it will be only those essential apps. Gmail will get a lot more foot traffic. The phone app will be cool again. And technological Satan will carefully tear down your walls, convincing you to get on Substack, to get on the “productive” side of social media. And your brain will be retrained on dopamine, and the cravings will return. Substack will turn into Letterboxd which will turn into Twitter, and from there you are a hairbreadth away from the psychological hell that is Instagram. And the next test will come, and you will be back in the library losing a battle for your attention.
This is where I am now. And I want to do something about it. I do not know what.
On the one hand, I think I know what I should do. I should give up my smartphone, clearly. I should switch to one of those dumb phones — perhaps a flip phone. On the other hand, there are social ramifications to having a flip phone. First, you will be perceived as the frumest (most observant) guy at Yeshiva University. Second, because you are not the frumest guy in YU, you will be seen as the most ostentatious person in YU. Third, you will be seen as somewhat pretentious outside of YU. Fourth, you will miss out on some things. Especially the convenience. Phones can do lots of cool things. So many things.
I can already hear you skeptics telling me that this is a control issue. That I just have to “learn how to use it effectively.” That my lack of control over my phone usage is of my own doing. That the brick designed to control my brain is not the problem — my brain is the problem.
However, this is one of those claims that requires seven brain cells and a meth analogy to debunk. That is, seven brain cells not under the influence of this drug. You see, I am addicted to crystal meth. My teeth are yellowed and broken, I tremble when I talk and I walk like a zombie. But really, that is just a personal failure. If you have true self-control, you should be able to smoke that sweet, sweet crystal without ending up like me. I happen to be addicted and cannot stop, but that should not be a reason for you not to try it! Here, go ahead, inhale, scroll once more, follow another influencer. I am sure you won’t be affected! After all, it only affected me because I am weak, surely you are strong enough to moderate yourself.
Could you tell I was being sarcastic? Well, I was. I am not addicted to meth (yet), nor am I extremely addicted to my phone. Nor do I think phones are crystal meth, although for a large chunk of the population they are. My screen time hovers around 4-5 hours a day, mostly spent on WhatsApp and YouTube. But I am addicted enough that it interferes with my life in a real way, that if I have extra time I will be on my phone, sometimes even when I do not have extra time.
I recently came across an article written by a philosophy professor about how the quality of his students has drastically declined in his 30 years of teaching, a decline he partially attributes to smartphones. The article is fantastic and for another time, but in a follow-up, he responded to some comments left behind by students. It was one of those comments that I want to bring to your attention here.
Mel, the commenter, expressed how young people are aware of what their phones do to them. They understand that it zombifies them and how it leads them to live their lives through the Instagram stories of their friends. And like me, they try to change. This group of people — “the 40%” — gives up social media and begins reading. However, in her words, “They are struggling, trying to keep strong, and then their friends that are in the 60% and consciously know what is going on and just do not care – they just like this cheap dopamine lifestyle – come and push the 40% back to the zombie state, mocking at them, saying that they are going to miss out things, and probably discrediting the university institution, reducing life to just easy pleasure and nothing more.” She goes on to explain how the student who just gave up their phone is in such a fragile state, that “they just give up” because they are addicted to the zombie lifestyle and afraid of missing out.
I am part of the 40%. And sometimes also the 60%. Sometimes I am in both camps. This student remarkably expressed what I would have said, plus or minus some grammatical errors.
So, I figure that if perception is the problem, I can simply convert my smartphone into a flip phone. What does that mean? It means I will delete every single app I would not have had if I changed to a flip phone: WhatsApp, yes. X, no. Calendar, yes. Chase, no. Google, yes. Canvas, no. My criteria have nothing to do with whether the app is time-consuming, nor with my religious life, they have only to do with whether I would have it on a flip phone or not. To compensate for the attractiveness of an OLED display, I will limit my daily time on those chosen apps that may suck me in. Those would include YouTube and Safari. I will try this for 6 months. If I am successful, this article will be published. Otherwise, it will enter the archives of my documents labeled “drafts.” See you in September!
Did it work? Sort of. First, in the non-cheating sense, I was successful. Save for a handful of important times, I kept to having around 15 active apps on my phone. Phone, Calculator, a browser, Music, YouTube, Photos, Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Calculator, Clock, Messages, WhatsApp, Notes, Camera, Uber and my Merlin birding app. Truly active apps became less so, and my days were still spent mostly on WhatsApp and YouTube. So what did not change? My screen time. At first, my screen time dropped by about an hour, but it has since gone back up. YouTube makes up for most of it. I am satisfied with the content — I am not watching Family Guy compilations all day — but dissatisfied with the time.
Another thing that has not changed is my dependence. Despite now doing most of my utilities on my laptop, including banking and all of that fun stuff, I am still reaching for my phone too much. If I have a spare moment, it is still my phone I turn to. If my phone vibrates, I still immediately look to see what it is. I am still constantly anticipating what my phone will serve me the next time I unlock it. It turns out that the dependence is more about the nature of the phone than about the specific content shown.
So if content restrictions are not going to cut it, what will? For now, I will be shutting down all notifications except for phone calls to reduce the intermittent reward conditioning. Will it work? For some reason, I doubt it. I also now doubt switching to a flip phone would work, as the thing I am searching for is peace, not Luddism or even disconnection. I do not find myself more connected to my phone than my family and friends with flip phones. I have no data to support this, but anecdotally speaking, I think I glance at my phone about as much as my flip-phone comrades. And as someone who has watched many a movie on a 3-inch LG VN220 flip phone, I know all too well that I can become just as dependent on a dumb phone as I can on a smart one.
I seek what is known as menuchas hanefesh, the tranquility of the soul. How I will find it is yet unknown to me, and please, if within this world of limitless, bottomless entertainment you have found it, teach me your ways. Until then, you can find me on the eve of exams in that same chair in the library, fighting the battle of attention.
Photo Credit: Unsplash